Clyfford Still Museum

There are few museums in the world devoted to the
work of a single artist—think of the Picasso Museum
in Paris, Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, Andy
Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and Donald Judd’s
installations in Marfa, Texas. And now, Denver has
the Clyfford Still Museum. After seven years of negotiation and
construction, the 28,000-square-foot exhibition and study center
opened in November 2011. Without a doubt, it is another jewel in
the city’s significant and sophisticated civic crown, representing
a successful partnership between public and private interests.
Those unfamiliar with the story of the museum’s establishment,
however, might have a few questions. Why Clyfford Still?
And, why Denver? The answers reveal a fascinating and baroque
story that involves a singular artist with an abiding desire to
control his legacy, an eccentric one-page will, a visionary mayor,
and a passionate group of donors.

The saga begins with Still himself. Not as widely known as
some of his contemporaries—Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock,
and Willem de Kooning—Clyfford Still is nonetheless one of
the giants of Abstract Expressionism, the uniquely American
art movement that began after World War II and dominated the
international art world for three decades. Abstract Expressionist
canvasses tended to be large, enveloping the viewer (some say
because the artists worked in such huge lofts). The critic Clement
Greenberg called them “action painters” and, indeed, their bold
painterly gestures abandoned all recognizable imagery. Still was
one of the earliest painters to develop a mature style in this mode,
and he is widely acknowledged as one of the movement’s most
significant contributors. His friend Jackson Pollock said of him,
“Still makes the rest of us look academic.”

Still’s work and teachings were extremely inf luential in California
before he made the inevitable move to the East Coast.
Between 1946 and 1951, he frequently commuted between
California and New York, making the trip in his beloved Mark IV
Jaguar. Though living in San Francisco, he was intimately aware
of the work that was being done on the opposite coast. In 1951
he moved to New York City, the epicenter of the contemporary
art world, the place where the Abstract Expressionists and their colleagues, dealers, friends, and hangers-on painted and talked,
argued and painted.

Living by a self-styled set of Calvinist-like principles, Clyfford
Still was one of the most exacting and cantankerous of the Abstract
Expressionists. He tightly controlled who bought, showed, and
collected his work. He once even gloated that he had deliberately
sold New York’s MoMA an inferior copy of a piece in which they
had expressed interest as revenge for not choosing the painting he
actually wanted them to buy.

Painting was a serious matter for Still. “These are not paintings
in the usual sense,” he wrote, “they are life and death merging
in fearful union. As for me, they kindle a fire; through them I
breathe again, hold a golden cord, find my own revelation.” These
emotional extremes are evident in his thickly troweled, almost
violent slashings of color and in his work’s immense space and
sheer size. For example, PH-247 (1951), which currently hangs in
the museum, is a giant blue beauty at a full 16 feet by 10 feet. It
doesn’t just envelope viewers; it nearly devours them.

Still was also powerfully articulate. When he believed they
were not living up to his ideals, he used this skill to eviscerate
critics, potential collectors, art galleries, museum curators, dealers,
and even his own contemporaries. He is the only artist to
refuse an invitation to the Venice Biennale, citing the artistic and
political “machinations of such exhibitions.” He ruthlessly cut
ties with friends such as Rothko and Barnett Newman when he
felt they were selling out to the art establishment. He once went
so far as to visit a friend’s house and cut his own painting out of
its frame because he objected to the way it was displayed. Then
there is the famous rant to a critic whose review he detested. He
mailed her a scathing letter along with a pair of rubber pants.

After a decade in New York, Still and his wife, Patricia, moved
to a farm in rural Maryland. It was a retreat from the art world
he had come to despise, but hardly retirement: Still continued to
paint and carefully orchestrate the dissemination of his work. He
would appear at intervals that, in retrospect, seem calculated to
keep him in the public eye—but just enough.

Shows of his works were mounted at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He maintained his connection with
the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. There were
solo shows at the San Francisco MoMA and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, both essentially curated by Still himself. He even
went so far as to dictate the color for the wall paint—Benjamin
Moore White No. 14-4.

Astonishingly, during his lifetime only 150 paintings were sold
to collectors or gifted to institutions. At the time of his death in
1980, over 94 percent of his life’s work was carefully preserved in
his Maryland studio. Much of it had not been seen since early in
his career and equally as much had never been exhibited or seen
at all. Nor would they be any time soon. All of the 2400 works
in the estate—roughly 825 paintings and 1575 works on paper,
estimated to be worth in excess of $1 billion—were shut off from
public view and scholarly study.

Clyfford Still’s one-page will was calculated to preserve his
legacy in exactly the manner he chose. As emphatic in death as
he was in life, Still decreed that all his artwork comprising his
entire estate be given to an American city willing to construct
“permanent quarters exclusively” for the complete collection and
to “assure their physical survival with the explicit requirement
that none of these works of art will be sold, given, or exchanged,
but are to be retained . . . in perpetuity for exhibition and study.”

There were, of course, many municipal suitors for this collection,
but circumstances—and a bit of luck—brought it to
Denver. As she grew closer to her 80th birthday, Patricia Still,
sole executor of her husband’s estate, reached out to her nephew,
Curt Freed, a research physician who lives and teaches in Denver.
She asked him to explore the possibility of locating the collection
in that city.

Part of her interest was undoubtedly the fact that Denver ref lects
many of the values that Still himself admired: It is distinctly western,
but with a newness that encompasses a forward-looking civic
ethos. It is also a city perched between towering mountains and
the American short grass prairie, echoing Still’s own upbringing
in North Dakota, Canada, and eastern Washington.

In 2004 Denver’s newly elected mayor, John Hickenlooper—
along with Freed and members of Denver’s Office of Art, Culture, and Film—brokered a deal with Patricia Still to designate
Denver as the home of both the Clyfford Still and Patricia
Still estates. Sadly, Patricia would not live to see their dream
manifest: she died the following year at the age of 85. The city
acquired the land, and with the broad participation of multiple
partners, city government, the Denver Art Museum, and many
founding members of the museum, raised $29 million to fund
the project. However, museums require an on-going source
of funds to perpetuate their work of scholarship, preservation,
curatorial responsibilities, and operating expenses. To enable the
museum to carry out these responsibilities, four paintings from
Patricia’s private collection of her husband’s work were sold at
auction, raising a staggering $111.4 million and ensuring that
Clyfford Still’s wishes would be honored in perpetuity.

It was good fortune that Hickenlooper, now governor of Colorado,
was well versed in the ideas of the urban theorist Richard
Florida. Florida’s recipe for a vital city is the deliberate cultivation
of a rich cultural center—one that draws residents and visitors to
live, work, visit, and use the city center. Hickenlooper had similar
visions for Denver, and today the concept seems to be working.
The Civic Cultural Center Complex comprising the Denver Art
Museum’s two eclectic buildings, the complex forms of the
Michael Graves–designed Denver Public Library, and the esplanades
and outdoor spaces connecting them with the Clyfford
Still Museum are crowded even mid-week. Lofts, work spaces,
boutiques, galleries, and restaurants continue to replace many of
the district’s parking lots and dilapidated old buildings.
Brad Cloepfil of Portland’s Architectural Alliance was chosen
to design the museum, although Still, ever in control, had specific
stipulations concerning its function. For example, although
the sale of books and postcards would be allowed, there could
otherwise be no cafe, auditorium, or store. As a result, the Clyfford
Still Museum may be the only one in the world where one
cannot buy a tote bag.

Because the museum is home to such a large body of work,
at any given time only a small number of pieces are shown in
carefully curated exhibitions. The current show, mounted by
the museum’s director, Dean Sobel, and adjunct curator, David
Anfam, is the fourth since its opening.

It is easy to imagine that Still would admire Cloepfil’s design, for
the artist’s paintings rest beautifully in the spaces. Deeply textured,
poured in place, board-formed concrete walls define the grounded,
boxy structure. It sits with quiet strength in the shadow of the
enormous titanium-clad bird shapes of the Denver Art Museum,
designed by Daniel Libeskind. The two buildings complement
each other and will do so even more once the grove of sycamores
planted at the Clyfford Still Museum’s entrance matures.

A deeply shaded reception area greets visitors on the first
f loor, which also houses conservation studios and displays of
various Clyfford Still artifacts, including his palette knives.
Upstairs, nine rectilinear galleries unfold in a graceful rhythm.
First come three smaller rooms filled with work from the 1930s
that illustrate Still’s evolution to pure abstraction. Then the galleries
open to reveal perfectly proportioned larger rooms that
exhibit his enormous paintings on soaring walls under beautifully
controlled natural light.

The ceiling is comprised of a series of oval perforations, set
on the diagonal, that are controlled by light-sensitive shades that
respond to the day’s continual shifts in illumination. Enhanced
by straightforward incandescent lighting, they ensure that Still’s
works are seen under the most optimal of conditions. Two
outdoor terraces shaded by cedar slats and planted with native
grasses offer visual and physical respite from the explosive energy
of the paintings.

The sight lines from gallery to gallery are spectacular, allowing
viewers to experience isolated paintings from a great distance. Cloepfil
had the enviable task of knowing exactly what these galleries
were to display. He knew their scale and he knew their power. His
is a pitch-perfect home for Clyfford Still’s monumental work.
Lucky Denver. Lucky us.